We all have our personal little movie gems, those mostly forgotten films you love to pass on to your friends, hoping they’ll dig them too. Those movies you love to love and love even more knowing that not everyone loves them or even heard of them, much less heard of cool people like you loving them. Well, here’s your chance to be on the ground floor of a future cult classic and avoid ending up as the one who discovers a film four years after the fact only to pretend you were pimping it from day one.
Go see Daybreakers. Soon. It opened at the box-office with a decent $15 million and one week later it’s no longer in the top ten. So, it’ll vanish from your friendly neighborhood movie theater real quick-like, if it hasn’t already. A real shame. It’s the best movie I’ve seen this year. Okay, it’s the only movie I’ve seen this year so far. But whose counting anyways?
It’s good. Not brilliant. Not a masterpiece. It’s simply good, which actually makes it more endearing. You can accept the flaws and revel in the good stuff.
The Spierig Brothers took the ancient zombies-have-inherited-the-Earth premise and swapped out the brain-eating walking dead with the blood-sucking walking dead, which remarkably feels like an original idea. But I may be mistaken. The idea seems so DUH that someone had to have done it before. Right? Maybe not. I digress.
It’s 2019. Humans are nearly extinct. Vampires own the world. But really, life isn’t too much different except everyone works the night shift and prefers blood in their coffee rather than creamer. Yet, since vampires have turned just about everybody into sun-hating fang mouths, blood is running out. As fate would have it, when vamps go on a bloodless diet they morph into that dude from Robocop who takes a bath in toxic waste, only with wings and claws and worse breath I presume.
Ethan Hawke plays a self-loathing vampire hematologist searching for a blood substitute. Sam Neill is his evil corporate boss. Willem Dafoe rounds out the big names in the cast as a human-turned-vampire-turned-back-to-human vampire killing Jesus figure… named Elvis (I want a “Team Elvis” t-shirt if anyone is inclined to create one… Mondo?).
Dafoe and Hawke team up to cure vampirism and corporate greed and all that bullshit. Nothing new there. Yet, the film works on an allegorical level about the depletion of natural resources and how that’ll eventually force the collapse of law and order and personal hygiene. It’s like Avatar with vampires instead of blue aliens. Okay not exactly, but they both roll out a similar tree-hugging message.
The film’s premise is interesting. The plot doesn’t break brain vessels by insulting your intelligence. And it’s no surprise that a fine cast of actors turn in solid performances. That’s a great foundation. The Spierig Brothers build upon it by delivering some nifty action beats exploding with ludicrous squibs all wrapped up in atmospheric visuals that never feel overtly derivative.
It’s a slick film. And between its genre, superb execution and the all-around cool factor it exhibits, Daybreakers has the makings to find its footing on home video. Fantastic. As long as it finds an audience someday, I’m happy. Yet, if you get a chance now, see Daybreakers in the theater. Tell your friends. Let the cult join you this time around.
NOTE: “The Goods” is a new regular mini-column focusing on, well, good stuff, whether it be nifty news, or finding the sunshine in otherwise bad things, or just pointing out something really cool like an interesting movie poster, little seen film, or viral video. This is a column attempting to add a slight bit of counter-balance to the boring sourness the Internet radiates. That’s not saying this column discourages robust debate on its topics. In fact, just the opposite. If you disagree with anything, say so. We just hope you do it in a civil, thoughtful manner.
